Lucky Bastard XIII

My apologies, I’ve been farting around in highsec running incursions with a shiny fleet, making me the 1% of incursion runners, according to the forums. An unfortunate side effect of this is very few funny stories, unless you can make the next Odyssey out of “I repped that guy when his shields went low, but then this other dude’s shields went low, so I repped him too; then the FC warped us out without saying anything and I lost my drones again”

The recent unwashed masses pissing in the free ISK fountain finally gave me a sense of scope. I’m doing the same thing over and over again to the extreme as a source of fun. As I said in a very depressing post I typed over the weekend and threw into the trashcan because it was too depressing, once you accomplish your goal you have to find a new one as fast as possible. Since my previous goal in Eve was “make lots of ISK” I was rapidly and easily curbstomping any source of a challenge with these 100-150 mil/hour sites.

Not that I’d stop doing them if the huddled dirty masses wern’t ruining the sites but STILL, point stands. No goal, no point, no fun.

So in an effort to fling myself back into my actual corp who had been wondering where I’d been for last few months, I grabbed a Buzzard, kit it out for scanning with an offline cyno and tore a new one on my way to Branch, which according to the corpmails is where we’re setting up. According to my lossmails, I titled the Buzzard “Lucky Bastard XIII” and flew off into the great void, pointing and laughing at anyone who dared try to lock me.

Until I got to nullsec where I realized I wasn’t sure exactly how to get to Branch. Sure, I knew where it was(kinda in the northy part), what it was (that place goons are fighting in), and the general area(above that circular place without sov) but I wasn’t sure what route to take. So, being a bit of a moron I started warping through gates based on which one moved me closer to a regional gate that pointed in the general direction of Branch.

That’s how I ended up in Venal. I jumped through a gate, there’s a Drake sitting there with me. “AHA!”, I think; “This is a perfect chance to test my microwarpdrive cloak trick, which is wholly unnecessary in all but the most coordinated gatecamps!”.

So I smoothly orient myself away from the gate, double click in space and press my MWD and cloak in that order at the perfect time, having practiced this over and over back when I was using the same trick on an Itty V. (Shut up, it worked and I couldn’t afford a Viator).

Feeling full of myself for demonstrating that months of pressing F1 through F4 whenever one of the ten grey bars on my screen turned red, I jumped through the next gate into a significantly bigger gatecamp. Remaining calm, I oriented myself, double clicked and hit my MWD and Cloak in that order.

“That module failed to activate since you are cloaked”.

For those who didn’t spend several hours cursing at an Iteron Mark V with an overloaded afterburner and a cloaking device, that message means that you were slightly off on your timing, activating the cloak and then the thrust module. On a Buzzard, the ship I was presently flying, this didn’t matter much except to a skilled gatecamp. Unfortunately I was still in the Iteron Mark V mindset from several months of pressing F1 through F4 whenever one of the ten grey bars on my screen turned red.

I instantly panicked and assumed that for some reason my CLOAK had failed to activate due to my cloak being active, so I mashed my F1 key again with all the panic of a velocity-fit Iteron V staring at a lowsec gatecamp.

It was at this point that my modules helpfully updated with the fact that my cloak had indeed been activated but since I had asked so kindly it was now turned off. For those who don’t know, there is a three to four second delay between decloaking and recloaking, probably for balance issues. More than enough time to lock me and therefore kill me.

In hindsight what was I expecting with a name like Lucky Bastard XIII? Here’s hoping for better luck with XIV.

Yeah, I love it when I get that message and latency kicks in, not showing me the green glow around an active cloaking device until I de-activate it. Thankfully, there’s generally not anyone around to see my cock-ups.

As for recloaking, the delay differs according to ship class. I think the delay on strategic cruisers is 10 seconds base, dropped to 5-ish with training, which I think is quicker than in cov-ops frigates. The delay in stealth bombers is huge, though, at about 14 seconds even with training accounted for. So don’t make the same mistake in a stealth bomber, or you definitely won’t be able to cloak again before being targeted.